Susan Poag, The Times-PicayuneRepublican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal talk with Katelynn Lirette of Barataria,Ashley Vegas of Lafitte, and Jodie Chiarello of Lafitte as the candidate visits the town of Jean Lafitte Friday, August 31.

For the benefit of you who had no power, this is what Romney said: "President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans." Here Romney paused -- for 14 long seconds. "And to heal the planet." Three more seconds. "My promise," he said, with emphasis on the pronoun, "is to help you and your family."

There was thunderous applause, primarily because the timing was exquisite. By pausing as long as he did, Romney gave his audience time enough to ponder and then laugh at the idea of such an ambitious promise. Slowing the rise of the oceans?!! Ha! Ha! Ha! What a joke!

As wonderful as Romney's timing was on the micro level, on the macro level it was absolutely atrocious. He couldn't have picked a worse week or a worse place to mock the efforts to curb rising sea levels.

Tampa, site of the Republicans' convention and Romney's address, is in a metro area that's consistently losing ground to rising water. That was awkward enough, but the next day Romney came to coastal Louisiana -- which has also seen land washed away -- to survey the damage caused by Hurricane Isaac. An Associated Press reporter in Jean Lafitte heard Romney ask, "Did the water come from the sky, or the rivers, or the ocean?"

You mean he doesn't know? The water came through Barack Obama's outthrust palms!

Thursday night, while accepting his party's nomination for re-election, President Obama refused to back off his 2008 promise. If anything, he doubled down: "And yes," he said, "my plan will continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet -- because climate change is not a hoax. More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke."

There is no easy cause and effect here. There were hurricanes before our recent trend of global warming, and we can expect that storms will continue no matter what policies America adopts and no matter what policies the rest of the world adopts. Isaac was an act of God, not an act of man.

But the president is right. These things are not a joke. It does us no favors to ignore the role that people have played and are playing in the disappearance of our coast. Higher water levels make the hurricanes that do develop even more dangerous. How much more dangerous do hurricanes need to get before better protecting the American people from them becomes a nonpartisan issue?

Viewed in the most favorable light, Romney was making an argument for reining in government and an argument against folks who believe government is capable of anything. In the fevered imagination of his critics, Obama is a megalomaniac whose thirst for power hasn't even been quenched by his election to the most powerful post in the world. In this caricature, the president won't be satisfied till he controls all the Earth's phenomena: the winds, the tides, the lightning and the thunder.

It's ambitious, for sure, but we live in an environment that has been made hospitable and profitable thanks to human ambition. We've controlled the mightiest river on the continent. We've pumped water out of swamps and built neighborhoods. We've built walls to keep out the surge of a storm.

And yet, if we are to stay here, we'll need yet more ingenuity, more ambitious public works projects and, yes, a workable plan to slow the rise of the oceans.

Humanizing Mitt Romney was the stated aim of the Republican National Convention, and testimonials about the compassion he's shown the sick and dying were emotionally effective rebuttals to the caricatures of him as a robot or an alien. In Jean Lafitte Romney spoke kindly to a grocer whose home was swamped with 12 feet of water. He convinced her that he cared.

"He's good, he'll do the best for us. He has our best interests at heart," Jodie Chiarello said.

Does he? Coastal residents need more than just post-disaster sympathy. They also need a workable plan that would render future storms less disastrous.